DB WORKSHOP: Tag discussion

What does it mean when a tag is added by “System”? Here’s an example.

@SuperSupermario24  
Usully that a mod made a tag-implication/alias that adds or changes a tag automatically.

@SuperSupermario24  
A common reason is tags carried over from a merge. The tags added by System appeared on the merged upload, but not on the target upload.

@Mad Black  
Implied tags are marked as added by the user who added the implying tag.  
I don’t think they get added retroactively.
 
Also, the example tag isn’t implied by any other tag.

@Exhumed Legume  

 
Sometimes they do, when it is installed as such. Might have been a while since this happened to a big one, thought. And I have seen the change by system happen when an image got merged, too.

Just curious, why exactly is “hoofy kicks” aliased into hoofy-kicks instead of the other way around?

^please do not question the legendary tag

I realize some tags are subjective and therefore they technically can’t be used wrong unless they’re completely unrelated, but I’m starting to see an irritating pattern where the “funny” tag is placed on images by the uploader- who also made the image- without much reason. I checked on the tag recently and found a bunch of simplistic captioned images and OC drawings, often with low or even negative scores. Several of the OC drawings didn’t have a comedic aspect to them at all.
 
We can debate the quality of jokes all day, but this tag seems intended to mark pictures that are found entertaining by a lot of people, not just their creator. Should its implementation perhaps be changed to avoid misuse?

No. The tag isn’t a judgement of quality, it’s an indicator of content. If you want to hide low quality submissions, use score filtering.

@Background Pony #0E0F  
It seems highly subjective (and misused) so I don’t approve of that tag1s existence and I believe it’ll eventually be deleted. I think it only exist (and ignored atm) because it’s a ‘junk’ tag, the type that clueless casual users will always tag sometimes. There are a bunch like that, like “art”, “my little pony”, etc. most of which are stating the obvious or a category that’s too broad or subjective to be useful.

@Vree  
The problem with getting rid of it completely is, what if you genuinely do want to find pictures that are meant to be humorous?

@SuperSupermario24  
The tag does not currently adequately fulfill that role, so that wouldn’t be an issue, I think?  
It is tagged on a mere 1436 pictures, and that includes the mis-tags.
 
If someone volunteered to start anew and tag every humorous picture on the site…I wish them luck, though one could question how challenging/impractical it’d be considering how many pics’d fall into that category. Tens of thousands, from the sites’ over one million, surely?

@expatriate.  
As I said, it has been attached to some pictures with no comedic content whatsoever- and if it’s not an indication of quality, why isn’t it on the majority of pictures that are intended to be funny? Why do other subjective tags like “epic”, “__ you magnificent bastard”, “op is a duck”, “wat”, “cute”, and several more exist? I don’t think the existence of subjective tags is the problem here. When used properly, they can be perfectly functional, as most of the ones I’ve just listed currently are.
 
The main issue I see here is that people are using the tag section to give themselves compliments without waiting to see if anyone else shares the opinion. The tag system’s established purpose is to help users find what they’re looking for and avoid what they’re not. While an artist is free to think as highly as they want to of their own work, I think such statements are best left in the image description. Subjective tags, positive or negative, should be left to the rest of the site’s users (or occasionally the mods) to apply, because they are the ones trying to get practical results out of this information and are certainly less biased in an image’s favor than its creator would be.

@Background Pony #0E0F  
I think that “op is a duck” is a very useful tag to block.

@Background Pony #0E0F  
Personally I would recommend removing such tags from pics where it’s obvious Uploader Ego Stroking and leaving them on ones where they can justifiably apply, for now.  
“epic” is a good example since it is also tagged both on OC-in-MS paint type pics and also on grand compositions where they can be said to justifiably apply.
 
Wouldn’t bring the rest of the tags you mentioned into this because they are different cases.  
“cute” was indeed a tag like these, but it’s one that was discussed and regulated and is controlled just fine now. (Check its tag description - it shows all of the character tags and aliases that are merged to it. I can’t link the previous forum discussions about it, but believe me that it is watched over and regulated.)
 
“__ you magnificent bastard” (or it’s sister tag, “__ is trying to kill us”) are a different topic since they are tagged by fans of artist X, not misuses by the uploader himself. “op is a duck” i a relatively important tag with an accepted use. Again, troll warning tags and their subjectivity is a separate topic, I personally think it exists in a pretty good position (most DA users are aware of its best proper use and adhere by it).

@OneOverTwo  
@Vree  
Keep in mind he did say “I don’t think the existence of subjective tags is the problem here. When used properly, they can be perfectly functional, as most of the ones I’ve just listed currently are.”

@Vree  
I did give consideration to removing the tag from some images, but that seemed like it would provoke arguments that could be avoided by discussing the matter here first.

@Background Pony #0E0F  
Well, you COULD try to make a thread for it and get an official admin rule.  
Then you can point to it if they complain.
 
(We’re just commoners here so our word isn’t binding, until it becomes a site rule.)

@Background Pony #0E0F  

 
I dunno, I turned off my filters and looked through the first three pages of the funny tag and basically everything was obviously an attempt at a joke, even if most of them were bad. When I set minimum score to 100, some of them were actually decent. I simply don’t see the epidemic of mistagging you’re talking about. Incorrect tags here and there are always going to happen and should be fixed individually.

@expatriate.  
Where’s the joke in these pictures?  
>>1164171  
>>1164170  
>>1164169  
>>1153619  
>>1152842  
And that’s just what I found in the first two pages of results.

@Background Pony #0E0F  
The first 3 are much lower quality than the other images on the artist tag (and were all uploaded as what looks like a set) so they were probably joke drawings.  
The 4th one I’ll give you.  
The 5th one looks to be an attempt at a joke in the description, or something?

@Background Pony #0E0F  

 

Pinkie being as fast as Quicksilver?
 

That’s a tough one.  
Maybe the style emulation, or Barb/Spike’s threat in the description. Or both. Or maybe nothing.

@SuperSupermario24  
Point is, a lot of these pictures have such weak humor that it can be hard to tell there’s comedy in them at all, but because the artist thinks their picture is funny, it’s listed as such.
 
I would suggest making it so uploaders can’t put this tag on their own images, but not all pictures on this site are uploaded by their artists, so I’m not sure that would actually be fair. I will say that the images where the “funny” tag was added later seem to have a much higher score on average than the ones where it was put on by the uploader, though.

So there’s the tag buttershy . For some reason it’s implied by fattershy and implies fat and fluttershy. When I clicked it, I expected it to be identical to flutterbutter . Actually it contains some pics of fluttershy being a cube of butter , some of her being made of butter (also goo pony variations), some of her mentioning or handling butter. But it also contains pics of Shy’s butt , of word “buttershy” and even her as a butterfly . Some pics seem to be tagged buttershy for no reason.
 
TL;DR currently there are many meanings of this tag: fat, butter, butterfly, butt and the word “buttershy”. But most of it is fat Fluttershy.
 
Theoretically it could be cleaned up to mean “fat Fluttershy”, but there’s also more descriptive tag “fattershy” for that. For Fluttershy’s butt there is “flutterbutt”. So what are we going to do with it?

@Background Pony #8BF9  
I’d say buttershy should be reserved for butter-related Fluttershy stuff – fattershy and flutterbutt cover the other uses quite nicely.